


Just A Bug

by lunalius



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Gore, Hanahaki Disease, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-08-22 16:54:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16601885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunalius/pseuds/lunalius
Summary: Johnny starts coughing up lavender and believes the odds are stacked against him.





	Just A Bug

**Author's Note:**

  * For [okaethen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/okaethen/gifts).



> I wrote this out of spite. I saw a sad hanahaki fic and decided I didn't have time for that kind of negativity. Conditions of hanahaki in this universe is that the patient gets it if they believe their love is going to be unrequited and it doesn't heal until that belief is somehow changed.  
> Unedited.

When Johnny coughed up his first ever strand of lavender, he didn’t actually know why.

He wasn’t in love with anyone as far as he knew, and if he was, that was terrible news; no one would ever love him back. Johnny wasn’t insecure, he was just practical. He was that first love type of guy – not the kind of person someone would fall hopelessly in love with.

Not the kind of love needed to cure hanahaki disease.

“Lavender usually signifies devotion,” Dr Hwang had told him when he first went to see her.

“That doesn’t help at all,” he’d replied.

She tutted. “It might be a representation of your relationship to each other, as opposed to something specifically about that person?”

Johnny pursed his lips. He was devoted to all his friends. None more so than the others, he believed.

He was wrong, of course, and he didn’t realise it until he went to a lavender farm with his friends one weekend and saw Taeyong among the bushes.

“Maybe I should get some lavender for my room,” Taeyong had told him, smile wobbly and not quite meeting his eyes. “Then I’ll get some sleep.”

“Shit,” Johnny had replied instead of what he actually wanted to say, which was that Taeyong should get chamomile because Johnny had been coughing up lavender here and there for two whole weeks and if he had to see more while hanging out at Taeyong’s for a nightly study sesh, he might lose his mind.

Had he been in love with him all along?

Lavender was supposed to grow fast, but apparently only under ideal conditions, Dr Hwang had said. Johnny’s lungs weren’t considered ideal.

“Not to mention,” she told him, a little exasperated, “This isn’t _just_ lavender.”

It had been several months now, and Johnny was coughing up whole stems of lavender every night – more often if he was less lucky. He shouldn’t have agreed to go on a road trip with everyone, including Taeyong, if he was so sick, but it was their last break together before their last semester and some of them were leaving to go home straight after finals and Johnny would rather literally die than regret not going.

“You’re not going to go into the water?” Taeyong asked, peering over his sunglasses at Johnny, who was lying on their beach towel, warily guarding his fish and chips from the seagulls.

“Nah,” Johnny replied, throwing his as reassuring a smile as he could manage. (It wasn’t very reassuring.) “My throat’s not doing too great, so I don’t think that’s such a good idea right now.”

“Come to think of it, you have sounded quite sore lately. You sure it’s nothing serious?”

Johnny snorted. “Nope. Just a bug.”

“If you say so.” Taeyong suddenly took a seat next to him, thigh to thigh, nude knee brushing against nude knee.

“What are you doing?”

“Joining you! I feel guilty knowing you’d be sitting out here by yourself while everyone else is having fun.”

Johnny groaned, “I’m _fine_ , Taeyong. You really don’t have to worry about me. I’m perfectly content guarding our food from the demon birds.”

“Nice try, dickhead. The only demon we need to guard our food from is you, since you’re just planning to sit here and eat them all.”

“Guilty.”

They fell into a comfortable silence. Out of all his friends, Johnny found the one he needed the least words with was Taeyong. Just being there with him, absorbing his presence, was enough.

Johnny was pretty sure that was what love meant to him. Someone that could finally make him shut up.

(And all the times they’d bended over backwards for each other, even when it was inconvenient for them. Like when Johnny had disguised himself to go spy on a Tinder date Taeyong landed for himself, just because Taeyong wasn’t feeling safe without someone around. Or when Taeyong stayed up with Johnny till 6:30 in the morning because Johnny was stressing over an upcoming exam, even though they both had the same exam and it was at 9:30.)

It was late at night when he heard the coughing. It was wet, spluttering, uncomfortably familiar. Johnny was up anyway because a few stray buds from his earlier lavender branch had made its way into his mouth, and he couldn’t well go back to sleep knowing someone else was suffering too. Sleepily, he made his way to the bathroom that the coughing was coming from. The door was locked.

“Hey,” Johnny mumbled. “Hey, let me in. Are you okay?”

Johnny heard dry-heaving and knocked twice, the sleepiness slowly seeping away from his bones. “Hey!”

“I’m fine. Go back to sleep, Johnny.”

Taeyong.

There was no way Johnny could sleep now.

“Taeyong?” Johnny’s knocking became more frantic now, “Taeyong? Fuck, unlock the door, let me in already!”

“What the hell’s going on?” a sleepy Yuta called from somewhere in the house.

“Taeyong’s sick and he’s locked the door. Do you know how to pick locks?”

Yuta’s eyes widened, but he still looked out of it. “Fuck. I don’t know bathroom doors, dude, that’s like asking Usain Bolt to play soccer or something… wait I think he actually–”

A click sounded from the other side of the door and Johnny stopped to check the doorknob again. It gave. “I’ll take care of it,” Johnny whispered. “Go back to sleep.”

“I’ll try,” Yuta replied sleepily. He’d fall asleep in half a minute, but Johnny was touched he’d woken up at all – the guy was always so particular about his sleep schedule and hated for anything to ruin it. He didn’t even seem mad.

When Johnny entered the bathroom, it was a wreck. Taeyong was bent over the toilet bowl but it seemed like he barely made it last minute – there was blood in the sink, red handprints marking his path from the door to the sink to the toilet. Johnny took a closer look at the flower bunch lying in the sink. He didn’t need to wash to blood off to know it was lavender.

“Shit.” Johnny swallowed back his own bile, grasping his friend by the shoulder. “Shit, Taeyong, you were fine in the afternoon.”

Taeyong had to wait till he was done coughing up the last of his lavender bunch. “I think it’s reached my throat,” he wheezed.

Johnny’s hadn’t made it to his throat yet and it raised a lot of questions, none of which Johnny presently had time to ask. He gripped his shoulder tighter. “I love you.”

Taeyong laughed dryly, picking a petal off of his lip. “You’re just saying that.”

“I’m not. I’ve loved you for months, I – wait.” Johnny stumbled to his feet to wash the blood and flowers around the sink away. He’d never tried this before but he knew it was what people often did soon after operation to get the last of the flowers out of their system, just so they wouldn’t have to deal with the remnants of a love they’d lost.

He started dry-heaving over the sink.

“Johnny!” Taeyong leapt to his feet, clawing at Johnny’s arm. “What the hell are you doing?”

Johnny didn’t respond; it was working. It was only a few latent tiny flowers – not a whole branch, god forbid – but it was enough. Johnny caught them in his hand and held them out under a running tap. “See?”

Taeyong stared at the lavender, then at Johnny, then he threw his head back and closed his eyes. “You didn’t have to do all that to prove it to me.”

“I kind of did. You know if it goes far enough up your throat it becomes irreversible.”

“You know I’m all stress-y and depress-y and have a death wish.”

“I don’t.”

Taeyong opened one eye and Johnny thought it was the cutest thing and he wasn’t even trying. “Thank you,” he said quietly.

“Don’t mention it.” Johnny bit his lip, “Can I kiss you?”

Their kiss wasn’t pleasant. Johnny tasted blood and he could feel the leftover petals around the inside of Taeyong’s mouth. It didn’t quite match all of the fantasies he’d had in his head over the past few months, but he didn’t mind.

“Ugh,” Taeyong spat, pulling away, “You taste like hanahaki disease.”

“Oh my god, shut up.”

Taeyong laughed silently. “We should go back to sleep.”

“We should.” Johnny licked his lips and winced. “After brushing our teeth.”

“After brushing our teeth.”

“How long do you think it’ll take to disappear?”

Taeyong scratched his head. “A few days, I guess? I should probably see my doctor and let them know things have changed.”

“Yeah.”

“So…”

“So… tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow.”

It didn’t take a few days. The lavender growing in Johnny’s chest disappeared overnight, and so did Taeyong’s.

“This is so much better than dying alone in my dorm room,” Taeyong sighed, clinging to Johnny’s back as they floated in the ocean.

“God, I don’t know what I’d have done with myself if that happened.”

“You’d die too, probably.”

“Like Gnomeo and Juliet.”

“Cursed!”

When Taeyong pulled Johnny underwater, all Johnny could think of was that he definitely wouldn’t have been able to handle this kind of rough and tumble if he was still sick.

**Author's Note:**

> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/singledadjohnny)   
>  [Curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/singledadjohnny)


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